Of course, Microsoft has done a lot of despicable things and they've been caught doing it several times. For example they were caught red-handed bribing the ISO committee... You'd be a fool for trusting them, but blind hatred towards them ain't any saner either.

There's lots of F/OSS advocates/fanbois who don't want Microsoft to have anything to do with F/OSS software. Some have gone even so far as to suggesting to modify GPL license so that Microsoft nor it's employees can use that software or code. That's the kind of people Linus doesn't want to get labeled as and I do have to agree with him. F/OSS is all about sharing, even with your most hated enemies.

I followed the OpenXML conflict pretty closely. Microsoft was not caught bribing any ISO body. The even you're referring to is probably the one which happened in Sweden.

In that circumstance, Microsoft itself reported an inappropriate offer by an employee, who didn't know better, to give marketing benefits to partner companies for joining that national body. The situation was reported voluntarily by Microsoft, the offers were withdrawn very soon after they were sent, and it's unlikely that it had an effect on the outcome.

I'd say that's a pretty honest way for the company to behave given that a mistake was made by an employee.